Prussian settlers come to South Australia with German royals' names for the capital city and its King William Street
Prinzessin Adelheid Amalie Luise Therese Carolin, from the small German principality of Saxe-Meiningen, married William, future king of Great Britain, Ireland and Hanover, in 1818.
Symbolically, South Australia offered some familiarity for its German settlers in the 19th Century. South Australia’s capital city, Adelaide, was named after Prinzessin Adelheid Amalie Luise Therese Carolin (later Anglicised to Adelaide), daughter of the duke of Saxe-Meiningen, a small German principality.
In 1818, she was known as Adelaide when she married William, the third son of King George III, who was the third British monarch from the German House of House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Hanover. In 1830, William (William IV) was crowned fifth monarch from that house, becoming king of Great Britain, Ireland and Hanover. William IV and Adelaide honeymooned in Hanover. King William IV was honoured by the name of Adelaide city’s main street.
Hanover and Saxe-Meiningen were among 39 German-speaking states in a weak federation from 1815.
The first big group of German settlers to South Australia 1838-41, led by Lutheran pastors August Kavel and Gotthard Daniel Fritzsche, were rebels against the king of another German principality, Prussia, trying to unite Lutherans and Calvinists.
Those first German refugees had common cause with the British Protestant Dissenters, who became a driving element in colonising South Australia. The Dissenters were seeking freedom of belief and opportunity from the rule of the aristocratic British establishment and its Church of England. Their continuing discontent, even after Britain’s Great Reform Bill was passed dramatically in 1832, added to the push to form the new colony.
Queen Adelaide, who opposed those reforms, gained public sympathy for her moderating effect on William and her generosity towards charities – countering the popular press’s negative emphasis on her German origins.
Adelaide was the only one to escape the South Australia’s nomenclature committee’s purge of German place names (Hahndorf to Ambleside, Lobethal to Tweedale, Klemzig to Gaza etc) during World War I
Queen Victoria was the last British monarch from the House of Hanover, although,when she died in 1901, her eldest son Edward VII, was a member of the German House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The last reigning members of the House of Hanover lost the Duchy of Brunswick in 1918 when Germany became a republic.
